It’s Manga Week on Sequart!

In celebration of this week’s release of Spike Lee’s Oldboy, a remake of the 2003 South Korean film, in turn based on the Japanese manga, we’re running manga-related posts all this week on Sequart.

Manga’s an important part of the history of comics that shouldn’t be ignored, yet it’s rarely been given the analysis it deserves in the West. Because Western understanding of manga relies on the vagaries of translation, the West doesn’t even have much of a sense of a canon, when it comes to manga.

We’ll also be using Manga Week to talk about anime. Yes, we know it’s not manga any more than animation is like comics. But it’s another important subject lacking critical discourse, so we’re going to talk about it anyway.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In 1996, while still an undergraduate, Dr. Julian Darius founded what would become Sequart Organization. After graduating magna cum laude from Lawrence University (Appleton, Wisconsin), he obtained his M.A. in English, authoring a thesis on John Milton and utopianism. In 2002, he moved to Waikiki, teaching college while obtaining an M.A. in French (high honors) and a Ph.D. in English. In 2011, he founded Martian Lit, which publishes creative work, including his comic book Martian Comics. He currently lives in Illinois.